Review: Valtakunnan häirikkö
Wildly –
Kapulainen in the stroller
Even if you let a woman go as a director, if you are lucky, things can go as well as at the Helsinki City Theatre in these uncertain times. One viewer said that he let out uncontrollable bursts of laughter from time to time, while a manly but rather rhythmless shimmer had been heard from close up, if not outright behind, throughout the performance…
Raila Leppäkoski is a distinguished theatre expert, known for his perceptive and strict – but not strictly – approach. And since Henri Kapulainen’s play is also raucous, it goes on all the time like a fire in the ass (sorry for the vulgar but comprehensive expression!).
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Leppäkoski speaks of a light “alienation” in a Brechtian way, and the performance does not do any injustice to the genre in question. There is and there is no look-alikeness, just like in Picasso’s paintings. The picture that is drawn of the post-Continuation War migrant settler and colourful politician is so rough and human that it cannot but be loved. Vennamo – so I think – looks mischievously from some lower cloud leading towards Karelia and nods: “the people know”.
But without the precise casting of the main role, we could have been in trouble, because so much of this is about hanging and trotting in connection with the title character, the “troublemaker of the kingdom”. Pertti Sveholm paints a character with sparing colours and apt nuances that any stage could be proud of. Good actors and eternal little boys, both Pertti and Veikko.
However, we are working on the basis of Kapulainen’s text, and it provides a good framework. From a large amount of material from recent history, the author has chosen the essentials and then drawn up an order for the cards. He has shaped celebrity figures into caricatures that overflow over the edges in Leppäkoski’s enjoyable character direction. Surface surface, but so selected that the familiarity of the features strikes directly at the viewers’ nerves of amusement.
Appealing to listeners with exaggerations, black-and-white – is this exceptional in politics? What about asserting power, rewarding helpers, betraying and leaving friends, revenge, calculation and the pursuit of self-gain? Politics has many faces, and they also include a populist cheek.
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Of the comedian roles, Jari Pehkonen shoots the bull’s-eye. Like a magician, he makes all the Estonian clichés visible and plays the role of Eino Poutiais, that appealing man of the people, who was a rage but still only knew “hard tea”. Pehkonen is already a gifted slacker, but Pekka Huotari did not leave his candle under a bushel in many of his roles either. With an unmistakable language of gestures and expressions, he meowed and murmured himself directly into the hearts of the audience, as the embodiment of the underprivileged.
Urho Kekkonen is not given much space now, but what is given fills it Mikko Kivinen in an exemplary manner.
Leena Uotila is a nifty flank support for Sirkka Vennamona Sveholm, a confident collaborator, and Eija Vilpas, oh my days – in this interpretation, Karelianism is definitely not glued!
When Vilpas – as Veikko Vennamo’s mother – instructs her son to “trust the foundation”, who can question it? Not even when foundations are so “evious”.